Moving across the country was not as easy as moving across the world. When we moved to Australia a few years back, we moved out of our apartment and packed up our entire life in a day (and did it badly). We had a giant party with tons of food and drinking and friends, and there was a general feeling of happiness and excitement, perhaps because this move had a definite end date.
This time, there was the never-ending chore of packing, and considering I packed up my entire kitchen AND all of my knives first, clearly this is not something I excel at. My husband and I had graduated from playing binge drinking games to hosting dinner parties, so a giant going away party wasn’t on the agenda. We were overwhlemed at the amount of people we wanted to see before we moved and trying to fit it into our last few weeks. We realized how many good friends we were leaving, and sadly, parted ways with a few as well.
And the entire time, this bitch was craving some homecooking but had no kitchen.
Thankfully, I have an amazing food network in Chicago. One set of friends allowed me to use their kitchen one night to construct a meatloaf (which they called stone meatloaf, because I ended up using many of their ingredients!).
Another night, I swung by a pal’s house and it smelled AMAZING–of garlic and wonder and happy elves.
She was making this soup, and ever so kindly sent me home with some for my husband and I.
I decided to give the method of making the soup my own spin, and I made it for my parents before I left. My recipe is below, and while you don’t HAVE to use homemade chicken stock, the soup will cry if you don’t. Just saying.
~LTG!
